tv Pacifists are outlaws How the Opposition Lives in Russia TVRAINENG September 13, 2022 3:00am-3:26am MSK

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[music] foreign [music] [applause] foreign [applause] yes

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[music] i couldn't believe it i more or less got myself together looked at the stock market and became genuinely convinced that this was really happening my name is alexander i'm 22 years old i live in samara and work in a car dealership recently i was fined forty thousand rubles for the discretization of the russian army it felt like i was dunked into ice water and all my plants suddenly fell apart my name is valeria i live in the city samara and work as a developer in march this year i attended an anti-war demonstration for this i was fined thirty thousand robbers i opened telegram to look at a message and saw kiev being bombed for me this was a shock my name is yan and i'm 37 years old there were two cases brought against me for anti-war statements on the internet post is i'm just horrified by what is happening this isn't just a crime defined by the

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criminal code of our country but also a huge mistake my name is vladimir saltevsky i'm 35 years old i'm from the city of novosibirsk and for the past couple of years i've been working in the private law practice on the 2nd of april i came out to the city center where i was detained for a post i was carrying the court finds me 30 000 rupees i thought that everyone would probably have a similar reaction but it seemed like everyone was going about business as usual my name is eugenia i'm 24 years old and in march i was spending 20 000 rubles for anti-war flyers now for me there's only protests i've put my life on pause that's it my name is vitali i'm from smaliansk and from the 24th of february i'm starting an individual demonstration running from around 6 pm to 8 pm every day

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i came during the protest at the end of february and start of march i just wanted to see what was happening so i came alone parked my car and could barely find a place to park because there were so many police vans the police outnumbered the protesters and whenever anyone began to gather or take out a poster a group of riot police would come and detain them i decided to film what was happening around me one policeman told another to look at me and i was immediately detained i'm working on a small project for a company that converts data from an employee questionnaire in a json format which is easily transferred to 1c accounting but the companies that used to provide

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products for use with open source have left our country and it's now impossible to buy the licensed version of these programs this impacts security and now i understand that now you need to work more to maintain the same quality of life under the sanctions implemented against us this love of collecting seems to have passed on to me now i keep his let's say collection banknotes indirectly reflect the

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situation of the country they're from the time they are minted if the banknotes reach into the millions and billions we can understand that at that time in the country there was some kind of giant inflation notice the mayor's office of novicibirsk did not receive an application for this demonstration this action violates federal law number 54 police demand to stop this public gathering it all began back in 2011 with the protests in bologna square in moscow i went out to similar protests but in my city of novosibirsk there was literally 300 of us there but that experience of on-the-ground action drew me into political life in russia at that time i was still working as a

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civil servant but i left literally within six for the months three years i have been a practicing private lawyer and here in communication with colleagues we all understand how our courts work more correctly how justice does not work in russia and it pains me to all my say pretty much support what is happening in ukraine and today it is very difficult for me to communicate with them well how does my father who doesn't understand much about politics internally or externally calls me a fool my mother says that i'll cross the line and then i'll get locked up i tell them how can that be if we live in a lawful state what would they imprison me for

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in general more than a hundred cars took part in the demonstration the convoy started at 1 pm from the area near the market and began to move along chekhov street the covenant will go as possible this convoy moved throughout the city and at the end they lined up on the square in front of the train station in the shape of the letter z for a photo i discussed this event online in a pretty harmless way i would say but as i understand the administration did not look on it very fondly my position is as a citizen is to be with the people the participants over the rally i'm very grateful i want to meet them and thank each of them the criminal investigation officers found an offence under article 20.33 the case has been going on now for six months already uh

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this one is uh gray the other one is black he's been with me since i was eight or ten he's even starting to get a grey moustache he doesn't seem to like me carrying him today just a few months before the so-called special military operation i had just found an interesting new job i was going out with friends full of hope of an interesting new adult life ahead of me that was only just beginning but on the 24th of february this hopes collapsed i was horrified that when i began to see the news about the rapes that were occurring and it's terrifying to imagine

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as a woman i immediately started to send all the available information to my parents who started seeing that it was all fake and impossible [music] your calling card will be this terrible year truly the undaunted people are ready to bathe in blood even in [__] but only if there were no posters on april 2nd i stood picketing with a poem by the ukrainian mathematician and poet constantino from my poster by a tragic coincidence he ended up being in russia at the beginning of the war tried to leave for ukraine but unfortunately was not able to as a result of our law enforcement system now unable to cope with this injustice he took his own life

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just before his death he wrote this poem as a manifesto [music] it may be more efficient to tell your friends post on social media for example for my neighbors who i can't reach on instagram can message them directly i printed out leaflets with pacifist slogans and tried to put them in a visible place where everybody coming out of their homes could see on the next day when i was getting ready to pick up my child from kindergarten i got to the entrance of my apartment building and then the doors open two or three men in civilian clothing come in followed closely by a local police

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officer they surrounded me and took to the precinct they used a whole range of standard techniques saying that all my friends had already told them everything about me that they understand that i am the organizer of all the protests that they have the evidence they their photos they ran the gamut i called a friend asked them to collect some things and immediately left to another city around may a district policeman called me and asked why haven't you been showing up at home i really wanted to see you telling me that i had to sign some sort of documents as well my case was scheduled for march and they constantly made some sort of requests until may once

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i visited all the cities in siberia and for me the city of krsnayak is the most comfortable the most advanced and the most progressive the only big drawback is the ecological aspect for me and i think a lot of others it's developing very quickly and dynamically it literally sucks all the money from krsna's cry around it just absorbs because the infrastructure is more developed the organization of cargo transportation is changing and certain cargoes are not allowed to pass my company isn't that big i only have our own four cars working

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meanwhile truckers are protesting the introduction of towels on highways truck drivers consider it unfair and are demanding that it gets cancelled they're taking off our last pair of trousers and tomorrow they're going to break our legs so the trousers don't fit anyway at the moment i only see minuses production is down so the flow of cargo transportation is down too when this whole tow payment business began i was 30 in a bit and i'd never been to a meeting but now we have to somehow try and take action in the end we've managed to coordinate with some of my comrades who'd already emigrated to the united states to organize the very first standing strike in kosniya's clay at that point we had some kind of democracy at that point the head of the travis police officials approached me with the request for a compromise so they put traffic controls to reduce congestion asked us to keep the protest reasonable

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which we were happy to do we just wanted to show our opposition to what was happening [music] we present to you in all its glory yet another secret dacha of the prime minister dmitry medvedev in the center here's the pond and the main house its approximate area is 1.5 000 square meters i became familiar with navalny from this very video and then started watching his other investigations like about yuri chaika i began to think of him as the person who's the only one who speaks the truth the only person you can hear it from [music] i was quite shocked when i went for the first time of course my parents immediately tried to stop me because i was a minor how old were you when the film came out i was 17 but to be honest when i went to the demonstration i

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didn't know so many people would be there they were pretty peaceful demonstrations they only started to disperse at the end when an undercover investigator showed up i remember when navalny got locked up there was a huge demonstration too and they didn't push back much but i think they just didn't have the time to coordinate properly in the second protest after they detained a lot of people [music] during this time i understood that in samara there are people willing to defend their position and point of view sometimes more sometimes less but these people exist and i'm very glad that we are able to stand shoulder to shoulder at that time i would condemn any choice when the so-called special military operation started i honestly expected that there would be a lot more people coming out but it turned out to be quite the opposite

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[music] people's activity was a lot lower because after all everyone was morally suppressed in many ways and were i think disappointed in peaceful protests and demonstrations they understood that coming out today in 2022 would lead to very little outside of risking your final being arrested the frequency of which only increases every year the most important thing still is of course what is happening now in the world and not in my personal life but of course on the other hand i am incredibly scared for my life and my family i am very distressed because i have tried so hard my entire life graduated from mgu with the highest honors did my best to progress professionally spend my whole life to make the conditions my daughter grows up and as comfortable as possible and now that i have just tasted this moment i have been working towards my

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entire life it has pretty much gone completely down the toilet with this whole business i felt like i was in a vacuum i didn't know where to go and what to do i was completely lost the protest did continue but they quietened down as repression began as you know you get used to this quickly understand that it's apparently not possible to change what is happening it's just infuriating powerless at the same time this hunger for change is still there inside what do you think is necessary for that it seems like the security forces need to see the light probably i'm not afraid to speak my thoughts because i'm confident in them but i'm scared because you don't know what they'll think of it sometimes people get locked up for six or seven

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years just for suggesting postponing a children's holiday someone please tell me how can we even speak about in children's art competition when children are dying in ukraine every day our sailors are marching well together glory tower sailors on 9th of may i took part in a war memorial celebration carrying a banner bearing the name of my grandfather and a slogan saying we defeated that fascism and we will defeat this one too meaning that's what's happening in ukraine today it can't be called a normal situation my granddad piotr fiordovic was called up to the front in june 1941 and spent the entire war as a mechanic for armoured vehicles for his service he was awarded three medals for his military achievements for the defensive protection of moscow and for victory

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over germany after the end of the war in september 1945 and almost until the end of his life he spent his time doing what he loved repairing musical instruments there was a follower of the z movement holding a flag saying something along the lines of victory will be ours the enemy will be vanquished i took out my banner right behind him and literally within a minute or two three people grabbed me by the arms and dragged me to the fence where they handed me over to the police i remember exactly when i wanted to become a policeman a long time ago a very long time ago but naturally that desire went away as i got older how do you feel about the police now no well there are people who can smile in your face while drawing up their case against you

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using article 20.33 they can maybe support you on a personal level but they have an order from above to find you how exactly are you supposed to feel about people like that as for how much of a protest is if you don't look at the official news and instead get information from unofficial sources online then you can see news reports of picketers being detained every day the protest movement is still actively going i went out with a poster with a phrase from the cartoon leopold the cat saying come on everybody let's live in peace as well as the 31st article of the constitution affirming my right to demonstrate ridden on the side my protest lasted about four minutes and i was later found guilty of discrediting the russian army and find 40 000 rubles

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in this interview in a public setting i must choose my words carefully so as not to become a defendant in another administrative or worse criminal case again as we found out in my individual protest any statement that doesn't mention anything to do with the military can be equated to discrediting the army and subsequently punished for some a war in a neighboring country becomes a personal crisis a person cannot calmly watch people dying and doesn't want to remain silent watching cities get destroyed and hearts and minds shattered this person risks everything ignoring their inherent instinctive self-preservation in russia there are still people who are ready to openly speak their thoughts especially for such a large audience i've been following ilya yashen as a municipal deputy for a long time now what do you think will happen to ilya

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yoshi now he'll paint something on him and send him away for a long time presumably but i do still have hope and faith that lia will come back and continue his activity and that we will still watch and support him together hi everybody the core of anti-war protesting boils down to constant action not necessarily every day but going out to demonstrate with some frequency for at least an hour and focusing most of all on converting those who aren't currently supporting the course to join fighting propaganda is possible only offline only through in-person interaction with people but there is little opportunity to have that personal discussion because if someone supports the military they'll certainly ignore all your arguments when you appear to someone as part of a genuine movement as

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something that is tangible in the real world then your arguments gain great strength this requires going out onto the street though not arguing on the internet and in the comments working not through symbols but through real people i hear people say that personal freedom is a question of separating yourself from society i often hear that if you only consider what goes on in your own life you'll be happy no as you can see of course not some of us including myself thought that until february 24th are we happy now no i'm really scared of letting my daughter down because you know what can she do without me [music] this is my home my family is here it is my country not just their country it is

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my country as well and no one can tell me how to leave or decide anything for me but still they have found an effective button to press so i will unfortunately most likely leave russia if i didn't have a family and i was alone i would definitely have stayed [music] ludicrous who lied to us for decades and stole from all of us where they're provided with funds open doors and welcomed by editorial offices of foreign media there's nothing like this for ordinary activists from russia i'd probably be lying if i said that the thought of leaving doesn't cross my mind daily

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i have everything here all my friends my native language i don't really have any desire to live even in the closest neighboring countries like georgia or armenia it's just not for me i want it to be like european as cultured and civilized [music] so that civil society can be listened to and not driven away finance i haven't saved up money to leave yet [music] plus i am currently helping my parents to take care of my 19 8 year old grandmother if there was the opportunity to live i would take it because i understand that everything is only going to get worse honestly i will try not to leave russia until the very end

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it would have to be the very very last straw a crossing of the line in the sand where there wouldn't be any choice left i don't want to leave as in my mind there is still this idea that this will all be somehow over soon [music] you

Borrow Program

Pacifists are outlaws: How the Opposition Lives in Russia
TVRAINENG September 13, 2022 3:00am-3:26am MSK

In Russia, contrary to what many might think, there are still people who don’t agree with and openly speak out against the actions of the Russian Government in Ukraine. There are some who speak out, which is already a huge undertaking, and even some who continue to undertake peaceful demonstrations despite the risks. We spoke to these people - about their fears, about their plans for the future, and about why they are not leaving the country.

If you want to support independent journalism, please donate here: https://tvrain.tv/en

TV Rain Newsroom is the English-language channel of Russia’s biggest independent television station, TV Rain. We have been breaking the government’s media censorship walls since 2010 and will continue to do so today. Every week, we publish a comprehensive overview of the most important news and events from Russia and explain them in-depth. We also publish our most important reports, interviews, and commentaries about Russian politics, economy, and society. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss our next ones. (French and Spanish subtitles are also available.)

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